Working my Way Around the World

by Harry Alverson Franck; Lena M. Franck

He led the way through the swarming streets, shouting answers to the questions I asked him. He said his name was Abdul Razac Bundak and his business that of “bumboat man.” That is to say, he sold supplies to ships, acted as guide for officers ashore, led tourists on sight-seeing trips, and in the busy season ran a sailors’ boarding-house.

Some distance back from the harbor, in a shoe-shop kept by his uncle, I sat down to write three letters for him. By the time these were finished he had discovered that I knew other languages, and I wrote three more, two in French and one in Spanish. They were business letters to ship captains who often put in at Beirut. The bumboat man paid me two unknown coins and invited me to dinner in a neighboring shop.

In the days that followed, our “company,” as Abdul called it, was the busiest in Beirut. I wrote many letters for him and for other Arabs in the city who had heard of me. Had those men been less indolent they might have doubled their business. But they did not like to hurry. Again and again, while telling me what to write, they would drift away into the land of dreams with a sentence left half finished on their lips. The palm of the left hand was the writing-desk, and it was always with difficulty that I stirred them up to clear a space on their littered stands. I did not get much pay for this work; but I added something each day to the scrap iron in my pocket.

When business was slow, Abdul could think of nothing better to do than to eat and drink. Let his cigarette burn out, and he rose with a yawn, and we rambled away through the windings of the bazaars to some tiny tavern. The keepers were always delighted to be awakened from their dreams by our “company.” While we sat on a log or an upturned basket and sipped a glass of some native drink, Abdul spun long tales of the faranchee world. Some of these stories could not have been true; but, with a live faranchee to serve as illustration, the shop-keepers were satisfied and listened open-mouthed.

With every drink the keeper served a half dozen tiny dishes of hazelnuts, radishes, peas in the pod, cold squares of boiled potatoes, berries, and vegetables known only in Arabia. But Abdul was gifted with an unfailing appetite, and at least once after every business deal he led the way to one of the many eating-shops facing the busiest streets and squares. In a gloomy, cave-like shop, the front of which was all door, stood two long, rough tables, with long, rough benches beside them. The proprietor sat near the entrance behind a great block of brick and mortar over which simmered a score of black kettles. I read the bill of fare by raising the cover of each kettle in turn, chose a dish that seemed less mysterious than the rest, picked up a large ring-shaped loaf and a bottle of water from a bench, and withdrew to the back of the shop. Whatever I chose, it was almost certain to contain mutton. The Arabian cook, however, sets nothing over the fire until he has cut it into small pieces. Each dinner was a stew of some kind, of differing tastes and colors.

Abdul did not often concern himself with the contents of the kettles, for his prime favorite was a dish prepared by running a row of tiny cubes of liver and kidneys on an iron bar, and turning them over and over above glowing coals. I too should have ordered this delicacy more often, had not Abdul, with his incurable “Eengleesh,” persisted in calling it “kittens.”

With all its mud and careless disorder, there was something very pleasing about this corner of the Arab world: the lazy droning of its shop-keepers, the roll of the incoming sea, the twitter of birds that spoke of summer and seemed to contradict the calendar—above all, the picturesque orange trees bending under the ripening fruit that perfumed the soft air, with the snow-drifts almost within stone’s throw on the peaks above.

For all that, I should not have remained so long in Beirut by choice, for the road was long before me, and I had planned to cover a certain part of it each day. But my friends in the East could not understand why I was anxious to go at once. “To-morrow is as good as to-day; wait until to-morrow,” they would say, when some small matter had kept me from starting on the day I had planned. But when to-morrow came, they repeated the same words. They could not understand my hurry.

There was no one in Beirut who could tell me which road led to Damascus. Abdul threw up his hands in horror when I spoke to him of my intended journey. “Impossible!” he shrieked. “There is not road. You be froze in the snow before the Bedouins cut your liver. You no can go. Business good. Damascus no good. Ver’ col’ in Damascus now.”

One afternoon, however, while in unusually good spirits, he admitted that there was a road leading to Damascus, and that caravans had been known to pass over it. But even then he insisted that the journey could not be made on foot.